A Thanksgiving guest brought us a bag of chestnuts that ended up not getting eaten that night. So the next day I was looking at them sitting on the counter and wondering what to do with them. Some relatives came back from traipsing around the city and told me they had bought some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. I thought, ’sure, we could roast these guys as a snack but the relatives just had roasted chestnuts.’ Then I thought, well, why not make a soup? Something I had never done before. So I cut the shells and roasted the chestnuts for 20 or so minutes. Then rallied an aunt to help me trudge through the arduous task of peeling the little buggers. When that was done I started throwing together the base for my soup.

I blitzed it together with an immersion blender and served it with bacon pieces and a tiny bit of cream. Upon some deep taste contemplation I have to say… I think this is a home run. I would be happy to pay for this. The cider adds depth of flavor to the overall ‘chestnutty-ness’. But there’s not too much cider that it tastes overly acidic. Too bad I didn’t measure the amount I added. The spices add a warm complexity. And the bit of cream rounds it all out. Again, maybe I should have measured. Even if I am just sketching out an idea. O.k., lesson learned. I will put a digital kitchen scale on my Christmas list. The only thing that this soup might have used was a little more of a puree than the immersion blender could give me. I’ll have to add a Vita-Prep 3 1005 blender to my wish-list too. But overall a recipe sketch worth saving.